Marie Gernet (1 October 1865 – 1924) was a German mathematician who in 1895 became the second woman to obtain a doctorate at

Heidelberg University } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, ...

. The first was

Käthe Windscheid Katharina "Käthe" Windscheid (28 August 1859 – 11 March 1943) was a German women's rights activist and a pioneer of women's education. In 1895 she became the first woman in Germany to receive a doctorate for an academic dissertation. Life ...

, who earned a doctorate for her work on English

pastoral poetry A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts ...

in the previous year. Gernet was also the first native German woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics, 13 years earlier than Emmy Noether. She was the only German among the first eight women to earn a mathematics Ph.D. in Germany.

Education

Gernet was born in Ettlingen; her father was an army surgeon. She earned a teaching qualification in 1883, and continued to study mathematics privately. In 1888, the Karlsruhe Großherzogliche Technische Hochschule accepted her as a special student, and she studied science there until 1891. In that year, both she and Ruth Gentry applied for graduate study at Heidelberg, but were rejected. The mathematics and science faculty of the university proposed a rule change to allow women to take individual study programs, but the university senate again rejected this change. However, the Baden Ministry of Education overruled the senate and approved the change, allowing Gernet to study at Heidelberg. There, she performed research on

hyperelliptic integral In mathematics, ''differential of the first kind'' is a traditional term used in the theories of Riemann surfaces (more generally, complex manifolds) and algebraic curves (more generally, algebraic varieties), for everywhere-regular differential 1 ...

s with

Leo Königsberger Leo Königsberger (15 October 1837 – 15 December 1921) was a German mathematician, and historian of science. He is best known for his three-volume biography of Hermann von Helmholtz, which remains the standard reference on the subject. In 20 ...

. She failed her first oral examination for the doctorate in November 1894, but continued her studies and passed on the second attempt in July 1895.

Later life

After earning her doctorate, Gernet returned to the Höhere Töchterschule in

Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( , , ; South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the third-largest city of the German state (''Land'') of Baden-Württemberg after its capital of Stuttgart and Mannheim, and the 22nd-largest city in the nation, with 308,436 inhabitants. ...

, where she had studied as a girl. It soon became upgraded to a gymnasium, and continues to exist (rebuilt after World War II, and co-educational since 1973) as the . She remained there as a teacher and academic administrator until her retirement.

Works

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gernet, Marie 1865 births 1924 deaths 20th-century German mathematicians German women mathematicians Heidelberg University alumni 20th-century women mathematicians 20th-century German women